RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
Astounding Stories, May 1934, with "The 100th Generation"
I HADN'T seen Bayley Spears since our apprenticeship together at the Woods Hole Laboratories, so that when I received his rather urgent written invitation to spend the week-end with him, I packed my bag, kissed my wife and infant son good-by, and caught the late Friday afternoon train from the little university town where I taught biology and evolutionary theory to unreceptive freshmen and seniors alike.
The train journey consumed some three hours, so I had plenty of time for reflection. In a way the invitation puzzled me. We had been friendly enough at Woods Hole, but that was almost ten years before. Since then our paths had diverged. Bayley Spears, sole heir of millions, had established his own Foundation and forged rapidly into the forefront of research in the fields of heredity and eugenics.
These had been my particular absorptions, too; but I had lacked a wealthy father, and the responsibilities of an early marriage—which I have never regretted—compelled me to accept a routine teaching position in an obscure university which gave me neither the leisure nor the equipment for extended biological research.
The Foundation was an imposing building, and the anteroom with its modernistic furnishings and even more modern young woman receptionist smacked more of stocks and bonds than of honest science; but I let it pass. As I have said, Spears had plenty of money.
I gave my name and took a seat.
"Mr. Spears is busy in the laboratory just now," said the blond young woman. "He left word for you to wait."
I am a patient, plodding sort of man, so it didn't matter. And in a few minutes the receptionist said: "Here is Mr. Spears now. He is ready to see you."
"Awfully glad you came, Rad," he said, shaking my hand warmly. "I was afraid you mightn't be able to make it." He stood back a bit and looked me over. "Still the same Radburn Phelps," he remarked affectionately, "a bit stoutish, a bit grayish, and—shall I say—a bit domesticated?"
"And you," I responded wonderingly, "haven't changed a bit in ten years."
In fact, he hadn't. His dark, lean face, his quick, nervous walk and talk, the blaze of his piercing black eyes, were exactly as I had remembered them.
"Let's get down to business," he interrupted brusquely. "I called you here for a purpose. I've started something big, and I can use you. Come into my laboratories."
We went through palatial specimen rooms, through a lounge room, through a gleaming white operating room that would have shamed most hospitals, into a huge laboratory outfitted with every conceivable bit of equipment to make a poverty-stricken biologist's heart nearly burst with envy.
Spears steered me to a long, glass-inclosed incubator, thermostatically controlled for constant blood heat.
"Here," he said, "take a look at that."
I EXAMINED the jars of jelly nutrient inside its transparent walls, neatly arranged in rows, and all bearing printed labels. The contents meant nothing; the jars might have housed an infinite diversity of forms of microscopic life, or nothing at all. But the labels evoked a slight gasp from me.
The front row bore on top in large letters: Spermatozoa. Underneath in smaller print were names. I ran over them hastily, then again, more slowly. I recognized those names; so would any man of average acquaintance with the world's affairs. There were ten jars, and the names were the names of ten of the most commanding figures in the world to-day.
One was a statesman of vision and understanding; another a playwright whose acclaim was almost delirious. There was a Nobel prize winner in physics; a composer who had explored new harmonies; a chemist of international repute; an artist who made Cézanne appear a plodding primitive; and the others were equally famous in their respective fields.
My eye traveled a bit dazedly to the rear now. Here the jars were uniformly labeled: Ova. Underneath were also names—names of women. A famous social worker; a writer of penetrating novels; a regnant beauty and top-flight actress; and the name of a famous singer.
"Good heavens, Spears," I gasped, "what does this mean?"
He rubbed his hands with that quick impetuousness of his, eyes glowing fanatically. "Rad," he said, "I am about to begin the most important experiment ever performed in a laboratory. It is nothing more or less than the propagation of a new race of men, under strict laboratory conditions and under my control. The dream of every eugenist of the past century is about to take shape and form."
I rubbed my eyes and peered again at the labels. There was awe in my voice when I spoke. "You mean to say you were able to obtain—er—specimens from all these people?"
"Yes, I finally managed it. It took a heap of time and patience, of money in some cases, of cajolings and appeals to vanity in others; but there they are—my specimens—complete. The very ones I wanted, Rad."
He leaned over me earnestly. "You and I had discussed eugenics at length at Woods Hole; we pondered the day when large-scale mating for definite inheritable qualities would be possible. I have gone much further. I approached these ten men and ten women only after the most careful study of their particular talents and forms of genius—more, I traced the genealogy of each back over generations to insure that there were no flaws in their heredities; that the particular qualities I looked for were dominant in their families. I must confess I have been eminently successful."
I stared in fascination at the innocent-looking jars.
"I understand this much," I admitted finally. "You intend mating particular ovum with particular sperm ectogenically—outside the body—and no doubt you've prepared nutrient solutions in which the fertilized ova can grow normally. But in Heaven's name, where will it get you? You will have incubator babies who will grow to manhood and womanhood, and then you must start all over again, convincing them and mating particular germ cells once more. I believe we had decided that an experiment in human eugenics required at least twenty to fifty generations to show definitive results, and you and I and all our works will be dead long before that time."
Bayley burned hotly with the flame of his own devising. "That," he cried, "is where you are wrong." He hitched his chair closer to mine. "Let's get down to fundamentals. Inheritance is carried in the germ plasm, or, rather, in the genes making up the chromatin in the germ plasm, isn't it?"
"Well?" I said rather impatiently.
"And from Weissman's day on, it is indisputable that this germ plasm, present in original ovum and sperm, is carried on unchanged to the next generation and handed on by it to the next, so that heredity is simply the continuity of the germ plasm from generation to generation."
I still didn't see the point and said so plainly.
"Sheer blindness!" he almost shouted. "Why must we bother growing each generation to maturity? Can't we achieve exactly the same results by waiting until the mesoderm, which contains the germ plasm, is formed in the fertilized ova, and remating its germinal cells with similar cells from another fertilized egg?"
I stared. "That has never been done before."
"Wrong again," he contradicted.
"I've just established the proper technique. Within the space of one year, by continued fertilizations of mesoderm germ plasm, we shall have telescoped a hundred generations and skipped almost three thousand years of human life."
I was so dazed that all I could do was echo feebly the word: "We?"
Spears rose and placed his hand on my shoulder. "Yes, we. I'm rotten at actual laboratory manual technique and you, I remember, were rather a wizard at it. The separation of the mesoderm cells is an exceedingly delicate process. I'm offering you a job, living quarters for your family, and—you don't have to worry about the pay."
IT was more than a year later, fourteen months to be exact, when we completed our one hundredth generation. We stood watching the rows of bottles filled with nutrient jelly, each housing fertilized, growing ova, pure-bred, containing definite inherited characteristics in accordance with Spears' decisions, and plotted out on an immense chart facing us on the laboratory wall.
"We've reached the goal," I remarked. "I suppose you'll let this generation grow to normal maturity."
Spears was literally devouring the contents of the incubator with his eyes. "Yes." Then to himself, as if I were not present, he added softly: "Three thousand years ahead into the future! Men and women of the year 4934, I salute you!"
I faced him firmly. "Listen to me, Bayley. I've been wanting to say things to you for months, ever since I saw how you were controlling the inheritance of these—these beings of the laboratory. I'm uneasy—more, I'm scared."
"What do you mean?" he asked sharply.
"Just this: I admit I didn't like the idea from the very beginning. And I'll also admit it was the more than generous pay you offered that tempted me. Now it's at an end and I can talk freely. This experiment of ours may lead to dangerous consequences. In the first place, we know very little about the so-called laws of eugenics—it's been all theory as far as man is concerned.
"In the second place, we haven't worked as nature works, or even as animal breeders do. We permitted no generation to grow to maturity; we worked from germ cell to germ cell. The outside world, environmental influences, the molding and shaping and eradication of false starts, of possible lethal mutations, have all been eliminated. We do not know what other qualities have developed in these hundred generations beside the ones we bred for.
"Furthermore," I continued, warming up to my harangue—it had been in my mind for quite a while—"you've bred fanatically. Musician with musician, physicist with physicist, writer with writer, again and again, exclusively. Inbreeding of the worst type; never a chance for new blood, new vigor from outside strains with more ordinary qualities. Heaven only knows what the result may be when they all grow up into men and women."
Spears stared at me. "You're crazy, man. This is the greatest experiment of all time."
"And the most dangerous. Listen, Bayley," I said earnestly. "Take my advice and destroy these—er—specimens before it is too late."
He laughed shortly and turned away from me, to gaze at those confounded jars with the worshipful eyes of a religious fanatic. "Now I know you are crazy!"
I shrugged. Of course I hadn't expected anything else.
"What are your plans for rearing these embryos, when they turn into normal human babies?" I asked. I had asked that same question before, during the course of our work, and each time Spears had evaded me. Now, however, he told me.
"I've everything arranged. I'm not taking any chances on contamination from that outside world you spoke of so reverently, and I want no legal complications as to control. I'm sailing with my embryos within a week to a certain obscure island in the South Pacific, now uninhabited. I'm taking along full equipment, a nurse, a doctor, and a child psychologist. No one shall know of my destination, of my plans, until I return with my new race, some twenty years hence."
"But food, clothing, necessary supplies!" I said, overwhelmed.
"I have left instructions. A ship, with a trustworthy captain I know, will call once a year. Even he won't see my charges. He will pick up a bottle on an outside reef in which my requirements for the next cargo will be listed."
"Twenty years!" I said slowly, then shook his hand. "You are a true scientist, Spears."
"I want you along," he remarked.
"Me?" I echoed startled, and shook my head. "Sorry; it's impossible. Aside from my doubts, I have a wife and a child." I smiled quizzically. "A normal youngster, growing in quite ordinary fashion."
He appeared disappointed. "I'm sorry, too. In that event, Rad, you are welcome to my Foundation and certain funds I'll leave in trust. No sense in your going back to that stifling little university."
I could only answer inanely to this most generous deed of gift. "But you—where is this island? Where can I——"
He shook his head. "I'm not telling—not even you. I intend dropping out of sight completely. I want no interference with my plans."
I PROSPERED rather well; not because of any particular talent of my own, but because of the splendid equipment of Spears' Foundation—I kept the name—and the very generous funds left at my disposal. My name became rather well known in biological circles, and I flatter myself that some of the work I did attracted attention.
The years passed, and inevitably I grew older. My paunch grew with the years, my hair thinned to semibaldness, what little was left of it was quite gray—in short, I was in my fifties. The one great sorrow of my life was the death, some five years before, of my wife. She had been loyal and devoted in adversity, and it was a pity she had not tasted sufficiently of the fruits of my prosperity.
My only son—officially William Phelps, but Bill to me and all his comrades—was being graduated from college within a month, and he was at once my pride and—I must confess, a bit of a disappointment. Not that he wasn't a good lad; far from it. He was twenty-one now, athletic, a football star to be exact, kindly, merry, splendidly straight. But he was not a scholar, and he certainly was not a scientist.
He was in my laboratory now, watching with amused affection what it pleased him to call my potterings around, while for the thousandth time I thought of the vagaries of heredity, and for the thousandth time of Bayley Spears and his young men and women with their one hundred generations of pure-bred, controlled heritage ahead of the present human race.
True to his word, he had vanished completely from sight, together with his jars of embryos, and, true to my own promise, I had made no attempt to find him. The twenty-year period was nearly up, and I must confess I was waiting anxiously for his return. The results, one way or another, would prove of incalculable importance.
"Hurry up, dad!" said my son and heir a bit impatiently, looking at his wrist watch. "We're late for the game now."
"I've got to finish this. It'll take only another five minutes." And because I was rushed, I pottered only the more, as was my wont. At last I was through, washed up, and ready to go.
My secretary came in. "A gentleman to see you, sir."
Bill intervened: "Tell him to come to-morrow. We're leaving."
"His name is Captain John Lawrence," she went on coolly, as though he had not spoken, "and he is a sailor. Said it was most important—urgent was the word he used."
I felt a bit uneasy. "Show him in," I said.
He was the typical grizzled, weather-beaten sea captain—of similarly weather-beaten old freighters, that is, not of your fancy liners. He plunged into his story at once.
"It's about Mr. Spears, sir. There's trouble, though for the life of me I don't know what. Y'see, he hired me under strict secrecy these twenty years back, t'make annual stops at a certain little island in the South Seas. It ain't even on the maps, it's so small an' out of the way.
"Well, according to contract—and, mind you, I was paid well for my trouble—I put in around March 1st, regular. My instructions was to anchor off the reef that went all around the island and pick up a bottle moored to a buoy. In it I found lists of things to bring on my next voyage, and on the reef was a huge steel case to hold the stuff I brought along."
"But Spears, man!" I interrupted excitedly. "How was he all these years, what did he say?"
He looked at me blankly, shifting his seaman's cap from hand to hand. "I don't rightly know, sir. Y'see, I never saw him, nor hide nor hair of anything on the island. It's deeply wooded, and the shore is all cliff. Only one place I could see blue water, a sort of inlet leading into the interior. Well, this March 1st, as per usual, I put in and found my bottle. Everything was as normal, but the note in the bottle—well, here, read it for yourself."
HE unbuttoned his pea-jacket, fumbled in an inside pocket, and brought out a soiled, folded scrap of paper. I literally tore it from his hand in my eagerness and ripped it open. Bill was leaning over my shoulder. It is a tribute to the captain's story that Bill had forgotten completely about the big baseball game of the year.
"Danger!" It read in a trembling script so unlike Spears' former bold, discursive strokes. "By the time you pick this up, very likely I'll be dead. Better so! I should have heeded Phelps' warning. Too late now! Sheer off at once; don't attempt a landing. Go to nearest naval station of any great power; have warships sent to blow this accursed island out of the water. Above all, no landings!
"The world must be protected from what this blot on nature holds. I knew it years ago, but I was stubborn. I thought to change things. I am paying the penalty. Deliver this to Radburn Phelps, care of Spears' Foundation, Briarcliff, N. Y. He was right, and I was wrong—hellishly wrong. I leave you everything, Rad; all my worldly belongings. Good-by. I must sneak this off; it's my last chance."
It was signed: Baley Spears.
My hand shook as I read it. I looked up at the grizzled sea captain helplessly. Bill gave a sort of whoop. He had heard parts of Spears' story from me.
"Did you follow instructions, Captain Lawrence, and raise the navy?" he snapped.
The old salt shook his head. "No, sir. In the first place it would 'a' sounded kind of lunatic, and I got a reputation to uphold. Ain't never even reported a sea serpent in all my seagoing days. And in the second place, I didn't like the idea of blowing the place up. Maybe Mr. Spears was still alive. So I thought I'd come to you first, sir, seeing as I didn't know what it was all about, and I didn't want t'do anything as might harm 'im."
Bill clapped him heartily on the back. "And you did absolutely right. A man of discretion and parts, I see. Where is this island?" He told us its bearings; it didn't have a name.
"And you came straight for New York?"
"Took me nigh six weeks."
"How's your crew?"
"Good lads, all." The captain grinned suddenly. "All armed, an' spoiling for trouble."
"Good!" exclaimed my most remarkable offspring. "I see we understand each other."
I was sitting, dazed, overwhelmed. My old friend was dead; his great experiment gone to some frightful smash. I found it hard to grasp the thing entire.
My son had no such difficulties. "We'll have to pack in a hurry," he told me casually. "You'll be ready to sail to-morrow, Captain Lawrence?"
The sailor nodded. "I left word in port to coal and provision her before I came up here." A most amazing old salt!
I came out of my daze. After all, I was no longer young, and rash decisions came hard.
"We'll do nothing of the sort, you young whelp," I sputtered. "We'll let well enough alone. I'm notifying Washington right away, so they may take the proper steps. Those were poor Bayley's last wishes." Accordingly, at noon sharp of the following day, the Mary of Scotland sailed out of a Brooklyn dock, every sail set to catch the whipping breeze, engines pounding under full pressure, bound for an unknown island in a little-known part of the South Seas. On board were Captain Lawrence and a hard-bitten crew of ten, together with Bill Phelps, self-appointed master of the expedition, and his doddering old father, a most seasick individual, and in every one's way.
WE raised the island exactly five weeks later. It loomed on the horizon like a veritable replica of Bocklin's painting, the "Island of the Dead." It was roughly circular in shape, and not over three miles in its greatest diameter. Frowning cliffs climbed perpendicularly out of the blue surge of the Pacific, and a reef, smothered in foam and only occasionally rearing its jagged rocks, seemed to encircle the island completely.
We were all on deck, every man strained and excited. I had even forgotten the continuous nightmare of seasickness that had followed me all the way from New York.
"You see," Captain Lawrence pointed to what seemed a platform of rock in mid-reef, "there's where the buoy is to which the bottle was attached. And if you'll look closely, you'll observe the steel chest in which we put the supplies."
Bill shaded his eyes and looked. "I don't see any opening through the reef."
"There is one, but it's too shallow for our Mary. Just enough for a small boat."
We anchored near the reef. The lifeboat was launched and rowed over to the buoy. The mate came back soon and reported that the stores of the previous voyage had not been touched. I stared nervously at the grim, battlemented island. The silence was ominous, the unstirring character of the wooded cliffs a threat. What mysteries of evolution lay within? Perhaps—and my heart gave a bound—they were all dead. In that case——
"When do we land on the island?" I asked the captain.
"We had intended exploring this afternoon," he replied, with a sly, sidelong glance at my son.
That obstreperous youngster said roughly: "Now look here, dad.
There's danger in there. You can't go—"
But I am stubborn, too—on occasion—and I wanted to see at least the skeletons of those strange inheritors of the future. I was positive they were all dead and that this talk of danger was ridiculous.
So when the boat sheered off I sat with the rest; the captain, Bill, and four members of the crew. All were armed with rifles and revolvers except myself. I had never used a gun in my life.
We rowed through the gap in the foamy reef and circled the island in the comparatively still inner water. Halfway around was the inlet of which the captain had spoken, and we went in with swinging oars. The stream narrowed sharply between beetling walls until we could almost touch either side. Then it opened suddenly into a hollow, a bowl surrounded by precipices and lush with the vegetation of the South Seas. The stream trickled to an inglorious end not much farther on.
At the farther end, close to the frowning wall of the mountain, nestled a series of well-constructed cabins. In front were what once no doubt, had been clearings, tilled patches of soil, but they were now overgrown with the crawling life of the jungle. Not a sound, not a sign, to show that human life still existed.
"What is that?" Bill demanded sharply.
The boat had grounded on a little sandy beach, and the men were peering fearfully around. At the sound of his voice, oars dropped and rifles sprang into jittery hands.
A GIRL was coming down the mountainside, or, rather, she was clambering down an impossible wall with the agility and sure-footedness of a goat. Even as we gasped she sprang lightly into the valley and turned her face toward the inlet. Then we gasped some more.
I am already an old man and not given to overexamination of pretty faces, but never in all my years had I ever seen such a glorious creature. She was a study in gold, as she stood, lightly poised, not yet seeing us, her rounded, supple limbs encased in khaki riding breeches and open blouse. The skin of her oval, cameo-cut face was a soft, warm gold, her hair was glittering, fine-spun gold, and later we noticed that her eyes, of sea green, had golden flecks that literally dazzled.
"Damn!" said my son, and the curse had a most prayerful sound. I'm afraid that Bill, a most susceptible youth, succumbed at that first sight. "If that's what old Spears developed, then—— Hi, there!" he yelled.
The girl swung around with a single flowing motion, saw us, and vanished in almost the same movement. Or so it seemed to me. For the nearest covert—a clump of palms—was at least fifty feet behind her.
Bill sprang recklessly out of the boat and started running. I shouted after him, but he refused to hear. Then I, too, tumbled out. Captain Lawrence rasped an order, and he and two of the crew were at my side, following. Bill had already disappeared.
I hobbled through the waist-high grass as fast as I could; Lawrence thoughtfully keeping pace with me.
We had reached a point in the middle of the valley when song burst full-throated in the still, warm air. We stopped as though brought up against an invisible wall. At first I thought it was merely the surprise of hearing the singer, but I was soon to realize the horrible truth.
I CALL it song, but in fact it was indescribable. The unseen voice had a vibrant timbre, a range I would have called unbelievable. It darted unhesitatingly over a range of four octaves; the notes were keen, barbed shafts that imbedded themselves under one's skin and stung nerves into protesting life. I felt like a flayed animal under that strange torrent of sound. I quivered and groaned and could not move. Exquisite agonies brought tears to my eyes and beads of perspiration to my body. I saw the others; they, too, were suffering, nor could they move.
It flashed on me then—the hypnotic sway of this ultimate music, the keen, tortuous jangling of these superharmonies. I remembered with blinding clarity the chart in the laboratory; the last mating of a hundred generations of the concentrated offspring of a famous singer and a noted composer. There had been evolved a novel, an unexpected weapon from melody, a binding hypnotism more potent than guns and poison gas.
I struggled to break the influence; the sweat poured from me; but we were all fast bound. There was a rustle of movement from behind what I had thought deserted cabins, and two beings stepped into view. One at least might be termed human, though he was tall and willowy, with elongated head and pale, staring eyes. It was his mouth, though, which attracted the most attention. It was shaped like an ancient lyre, and across the protruding lips stretched a half dozen gut-like cords, which vibrated as he spoke. He, then, was the singer, the far-product of musical evolution.
He turned his pale cold eyes on us and spoke to his companion. His vibrating voice cut like saw-edged knives: "These creatures resemble the primitive—Spears. They must have come from that outside world he used to talk about so much, eh, Lorn?"
His companion definitely was not human. He was a whole chapter out of a nightmare. Evolution had done its worst as far as he was concerned. Everything about him was unhuman, from the tough warty skin that inclosed him, through the rubbery dangling fingers to the crowning horror of all—a single round, unwinking lidless eye set underneath a broad expanse of greenish forehead.
My voice was also paralyzed so I could not cry out. But my mind was clear. I visualized the chart. What and who could this be? Nothing that the chart could explain. Lorn must have been a mutant, somewhere in the earlier generations, that had bred true and increased its divergence from generation to generation. Afterward, by a series of eliminations, I discovered that he was the statesman run wild.
That terrible eye seemed to bore through our immobile bodies.
"No doubt, Musik," he said finally in harsh, grating tones, "we must get rid of them, unless Bion wishes them for experimentation." He shook his warty head. "Yes, decidedly, that would be wise. From Spears' descriptions we should have no difficulty in gaining control over the sub-savage tribes who inhabit the world, but it is better to be prepared. These living creatures by their reactions to Bion's tests will provide us with valuable information. The primitive, Spears, killed himself before we learned much, and the others, very foolishly, we slew too quickly for dissection purposes. Bring them along."
Musik spread his mouth, the cords tautened, and a peculiar trill issued. Like automatons, stiff, volitionless, we moved jerkily through the lush growth. Horror enveloped me. These end-products of our own laboratory experiment were about to treat us even as we had treated them—curious subjects for experimentation. That reference to Spears—poor Spears, he was dead, then—made me gulp. There was no pity in these super-creatures of a hundred generations hence; nothing but cold scientific curiosity and the lust to conquer a world inhabited by a primitive type of man. I had warned Spears, and I had been right. There were other factors in heredity besides talent and genius—there were the character traits of pity and understanding and justice and humanity, and these by desperate inbreeding had been removed or warped beyond our conceptions. And here was the result.
Then I laughed, soundlessly, bitterly. I had warned Spears; but Spears had also warned me. And I had not heeded. He had known, and I had not. Not only were we to be subjects for some particularly frightful kind of reaction-study, that had made Spears kill himself rather than undergo further, but we would be directly responsible for an unsuspecting world becoming subjected to creatures against whom I already suspected there was no defense.
BY this time we had come mechanically to the rear of the cabins—even the two members of the crew we had left in the boat. The whole lower face of the cliff had been hollowed out into a deep-penetrating cavern, whose rounded sides were of polished smoothness. Passageways, glowing with soft light, radiated like the spokes of a wheel farther into the heart of the mountain.
A laboratory occupied the rear, equipped partly with apparatus I recognized as Spears', but mainly with instruments and machines of complicated design whose meanings were utterly unknown to me. In the front, seated in a circle, were the other products of our unfortunate artificial evolution—a strange, diverse, and unhuman group. I could see the wild glare of fear in the eyes of our sailors, and even I shuddered against the hypnotic influence; though, from a knowledge of Spears' matings of inheritable qualities, I could label most of them. There for example must be Bion, the scientist, with enormous bulging head and dwarf, waddling body. There was an affected woman with a dirty-green complexion and protruding lips—was there a courtesan somewhere in her line of heredity? Another was a giantess with massive, rock-like features; a man with eyes that rolled round and round in their sockets and seemed to possess telescopic powers. There were some fifteen all told. Four of the original embryos, I found out afterward, had aborted or died in infancy, and the golden girl was missing.
Musik trilled again, and pain stabbed through every nerve. Then warm life flowed back into my limbs.
Lorn, the spokesman, bent his warty face on me. "Where do you primitives come from?"
I determined to face them boldly, though my knees were shaking. "We come from the great world outside, to which this island is but a tiny pin prick."
Lorn gave vent to a grating, contemptuous laugh. "So Spears had said. It will give us room worthy of our powers."
"There are millions of human beings, and they possess weapons that can overwhelm you."
He was not impressed. "When we were infants Spears taught us of your weapons. Now that we are grown we have discarded such toys. We have invented our own. But why have you come to this island?"
"I was a friend of Spears; in fact, I helped him in the experiment by reason of which you are now alive."
A growl went rumbling around the circle.
Lorn's wartiness sprang into bolder relief. It was the first sign of anger I had seen. "Lies!" he said. "You primitives arrogate too much to yourselves. No feeble mentalities such as you possess could have possibly conceived the idea of us. We are a race apart, superior, on whom Spears stumbled when he landed on this island."
A roar of approval rose from the others. Passionless, coldly indifferent otherwise, this artificial generation had one sore spot—that reiterated insistence by Spears of their planned development. Vanity evidently was one primitive human trait that had not been outbred.
I tried to play on it. "Nevertheless, it is true. I could read each one of you the genes of heredity that went into your make-up."
Lorn, as I have said, was an inbred statesman. He grunted. "Enough of that, primitive. Bion will take charge of you. We require certain information about your tribe; your physical, biological, and mental characteristics. We are about ready to leave this island and make the world ours. We are the inheritors of this earth, and it is fitting that we enter our heritage."
"What will be the result of Bion's experiments—to us?" I asked with a show of boldness.
"Decomposition, no doubt," he answered indifferently, and became absorbed in thought.
One of the crew, a giant Norwegian, who had been moaning with superstitious terror, went suddenly amuck. He sprang toward Lorn with strangled cry and outstretched hands. The woman with the protruding lips flung a little capsule.
It hit him squarely on the forehead and broke. A dark, sticky fluid oozed out, ran down his face into his nostrils and mouth.
The effect was instantaneous. He staggered in mid-spring and collapsed. Almost at once his body began to swell, his skin turned fever-red, and one hideous cry burst from his tortured throat. Then he was still.
THE rest of us remained frozen in our tracks, horrified at the fate of the poor Norwegian. The circle of the hundredth generation remained unmoved, indifferent. The woman of the capsule even yawned.
"Take him away," said Lorn.
Only Bion, the dwarf with the bulging head, protested. "You have spoilt one of my specimens," he said severely. "I have few enough as it is."
Lorn nodded. "That is true." He turned to the thrower. "Next time, Mantis, do not use the bacterial capsule. Paralysis is sufficient."
She yawned again. "I had never seen its full effects. I was curious."
Musik said suddenly: "Where is Una?"
Lorn frowned. "I am afraid Una has not merely the body of a primitive, but the characteristics and feeble-mindedness of one. She refused to join us when we set upon Spears and his fellow inferiors; she has held herself aloof from all our plans. Now, in the face of express orders, she has disappeared. I am of the opinion that the time has come to treat her definitely as a primitive and eradicate her from our circle."
Approval rolled around the group, the women sounding Somehow, the most vehement. Was feminine jealously another trait that had survived to the hundredth generation?
But the mention of Una—undoubtedly the golden girl—brought other and more pressing anxieties to me. Where was Bill, my impetuous son? I had an awful picture of him lying in hypnotic state in the clump of palms, to be stumbled on eventually by one of these laboratory creatures, or to die of slow rotting paralysis.
Lorn got up. "It is time. Remove your specimens, Bion."
The dwarf scientist came waddling up.
At the sight of him, Captain Lawrence, who had held himself impassive, shouted suddenly: "All right, boys, let's die like men—fighting."
His heavy fist crashed out and caught Lorn on the side of his warty face. That monstrous mutant went down in a heap. The three seamen, yelling like madmen, threw themselves desperately into the fray. The blood lust surged through me, and, as I am rather soft of body and short-winded, I prudently chose Mantis, the woman of the capsule, for my adversary.
The first surprise carried all before it. I caught her hand as she was reaching in her tunic for something. Four of the men, including Bion, went tumbling at the fierce onslaught.
Then the giantess flashed a weapon. It glinted coldly in the light—a long, polished tube.
Lorn, on the ground, saw it and shouted: "Don't kill them, Juno. Musik!"
Musik side-stepped, and the cords over his mouth vibrated. A piercing, stabbing note issued. At the first sound I felt the deadly paralysis creeping through my limbs. I struggled desperately, but motion had already failed me. We were doomed to horrible vivisection, even such as I in the past had inflicted on rabbits and guinea pigs, and thought nothing of. The woman was jerking me erect.
A shot resounded, making crashing thunder. I saw Musik clamp his queer-shaped mouth together, and fall headlong. At the same time the glow of the walls winked out suddenly, and darkness blanketed everything. Outside it was already night.
Then my pulses bounded, as I squirmed in unaccustomed wrestling with Mantis. I heard my son's voice, and his shouted words were in German:
"Outside, everybody, at once, and run like hell!"
Joy brought new vigor to my aged limbs, the paralysis had departed with Musik's death, and I broke loose with a last violent effort. I dashed out of the artificial cavern, dim figures panting alongside of me. Captain Lawrence had heard and understood, too.
Behind us was noise and confusion, and the great rough voice of Lorn calling for pursuit. We were quite a distance from the beached boat, and the vegetation was thick and entangling. We could never make it. My lungs were bursting, and I realized that I was holding back the others.
"Go ahead—without me," I panted.
Lawrence seized my arm without a word and propelled me forward.
The next instant the island heaved under our feet, and the sky seemed to collapse in a blinding concussion of sound. I fell into a bottomless pit.
WHEN I managed to struggle out of it, I found myself outstretched on the little sandy beach, and my forehead wet with water.
"What happened?" I asked feebly.
Bill was next me, his forehead gashed. The golden girl, Una, was a warm blur in the starlit night. Others were stirring and moaning in the shadows. There was an acrid, sulphurous odor heavy on the air.
"Look back," said my son, and grunted to hide his pain.
I turned with slow, tortured movements. The cliff that had inclosed the cavern was a crumbling ruin; the artificial cave, the cabins, were buried forever under thousands of tons of rock and debris.
Later, after mutual first-aid administrations had brought all our party around, Bill explained:
"You see, I had found Una almost at the time Musik pulled his paralysis tunes. And she, good egg, did not turn me in."
Even in the darkness I could see that glorious golden tint changing to a warm pink.
"I was not one of them," she said. Her voice was grave and quietly melodious. "They scorned me, and told me I was a primitive. Spears explained to me why. He said that somehow I was an atavism, a throwback to his own kind. Even as a little girl he liked me more than he did the others. He soon grew afraid of them, but he refused to leave. Said he was a scientist, and this was his experiment. So when Bill came, I was sorry for him. I felt he was my kind, and not Lorn."
"And she sure is my kind," interposed Bill, a shade too enthusiastically. "She hid me up a certain ravine, and we got to talking. I heard how Lorn had led the uprising, and killed the doctor, the nurse, and the psychologist. Spears they kept for a laboratory specimen." He shuddered. "That poor devil went through the tortures of hell. Yet, somehow, he managed to escape temporarily and left the warning note. Then they caught him again. He killed himself rather than go through more experiments.
"By the age of twelve this super-generation had grown fully adult, and, working on the basis of the elementary science Spears could teach them, they evolved new and strange principles. They hollowed the cavern with a new type of power, burrowed deep into the mountain to extract the ores they needed. Spears was no fool. Though stubborn and unwilling to quit while he still had a chance, he must have seen that some day a crisis might be reached.
So, secretly and unknown to all except Una, whom he trusted, he imported for the past five years, quantities of high-powered explosives——"
Captain Lawrence started. "That is right. Every supply memo called for dynamite and TNT. I used to wonder."
"He stored it in one of the passageways," Bill continued, "against the day. But they caught him flat-footed. Before he killed himself, he managed to whisper the secret to Una. She kept it to herself, knowing that she was a pariah, hugging it as a final measure. She showed me the entrance from the top of the ravine."
"Why," I asked, "did you yell in German for us to run?"
"I was positive Spears hadn't taken the trouble to teach them foreign languages."
Lawrence and his men had already floated the boat.
"We're ready, sir. The men on the Mary will be pretty anxious."
I paused at the gunwale to glance back at the mountain of debris. Underneath lay the mortal remains of the hundredth generation, Spears' tremendous experiment in eugenics.
I stepped into the boat. "Shove off, captain," I said.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.